How to Test a Website: 7 Manual Website Tests to Check Performance
As an entrepreneur, you have your website up and running and your online store booming, but it’s not enough to just stop there. A website is not a one and done thing, but a fluid organism that needs to be updated and tended to regularly in order to give your business the power it needs to grow.
I hate to break it to you, but your amazing content is not enough if the technical backend is not up to par. One third of potential online customers admit that they will leave a website fairly quickly if they have a bad experience or technical difficulties.
You don’t want to chase your customers away before they can see what amazing services you have for them!
Having a website testing checklist in place is a great way to make sure that your website is always working optimally for your customers. There are many ways to test a website, but we’ve put together a basic checklist for manual website tests that you can implement immediately to make sure your website is the best it can be.
What is Manual Website Testing?
In website QA (Quality Assurance) testing, there are two main approaches: Manual testing and Automation testing. We’re focusing on Manual testing in talking about how to test a website since it is much easier to do because humans are the ones testing the website for functionality and are focused on the user experience. In Manual testing, testers go through the motions of the website in order to test the functionality, flow, and execution to see if the website accomplishes its intent.
As opposed to Automation testing, which may be more thorough and have less room for human error, Manual testing does not need complicated scripts and separate testing software that can be expensive and not fully capture the user experience.
While there can be lots to test, these are the 7 most important test for Manual testers to execute when doing website QA testing:
1. Functional Testing
The top thing on a website testing checklist should be the overall functionality of the website. Does the design lead the customer to convert? Is it simple to follow? Do the Call to Action buttons actually work? Are there any broken links? There’s nothing worse than guiding your customer all the way to the checkout, only to have the “Purchase Now” button take you back to your homepage and cause your customer frustration.
When you have real QA testers manually going through the motions of a potential customer, you can work from their feedback and immediately fix any problems.
2. Compatibility Testing
So the flow is perfect and all your links work, but do they work across all platforms and browsers? Next in website QA testing, you want to make sure that your website is just as compatible in Safari as it is on Chrome, and on an iPad just as well as on a desktop. No matter how loyal your customers are, when they want to use your services, your website needs to be accessible on whatever device and browser is easiest for them and the experience needs to be the same across all.
Arguably, making your website work for mobile is the most important of the website testing qualities since mobile phone users have exploded over the past few years and are still on the rise. Most people access websites mainly from their phones.
3. User Experience Testing
As we mentioned earlier, if a potential customer is having a hard time on your website, they will leave and almost 90% of them say that they won’t return if they had a rough first time. This is why when you test a website, finding out what the user experience actually is up against the intended plan is key.
Have lists of goals for your QA testers to come to the website wanting to accomplish and listen to their feedback on what the experience was, and if anything needs to be changed about the flow of the website, the visuals, or the Calls to Action. Did they get what they needed? Was it hard to find something? Was the screen confusing?
4. Interface Testing
Hand-in-hand with user experience testing, the next on our website testing checklist is testing the interface. Is your website slow when there is high traffic? Does it crash? Make sure you regularly check your servers, databases, and other integrations like POS or social media redirections for speed, smoothness, and consistency.
If you have an online store where you take online payments, this is the one of the website testing qualities that you do not want to overlook. Your customers trust you with their payment information, and if your website slows down, crashes, or is inconsistent in any way, they will not return.
5. Performance Testing
The benefit of Manual website QA testing is that you rely on real people to share their user experiences to improve your website, which is really the only way to get the true performance testing as a whole. This test is where you discover if everything on the backend works the way it should so that you can present the website and user experience you want for your business. This is where you make sure that it runs optimally in all circumstances.
6. Acceptance Testing
One of the final stages to test a website is acceptance testing, where both the internal team of the business and website development team (like you and your employees) and the external QA testers go through all the motions of the website to verify that it is 100% usable and ready to go.
This is the culmination of all the steps before, and the final step for everyone involved before going live. In this web page testing, you can fix any bugs and sort out any design flaws before going live. Acceptance testing should continue even after the website is live to monitor that as the business grows and the website evolves, it still serves its function in the best way for the user.
7. Security Testing
Last but not least, you need to be confident that your website is secure. You have sensitive information and your customers have even more sensitive payment and personal information on your website that needs to be protected. Manual testing is especially beneficial for checking SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and cross-site request forgery since a human is checking all these vulnerabilities, not letting them get lost in Automation testing.
Security is essential in keeping your customers’ trust in your business.
Conclusion
Your website is your partner in your business, and you want to make sure that it is always functioning at its highest level! Running this Manual website testing checklist before launching your site will set it up to give your business credibility and build trust with your customers. But, continuing to perform website QA testing regularly even after the launch will retain customers and grow your business even more. Stay ahead of the game!
Have an online store component to your website? See how LincSell can help you set up a secure and easy to use store to wow your customers.
